


Learn From Yourself

by FoxoftheDesert



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Earth Trope, And then Kara's dreams come true, Apparently the Kalex part of my brain is linked to depressive thoughts, F/F, Lots of Angst, Mentions of self-harm, Or Alex gets told what's what by her alternate, Self-destructive!Alex, Sometimes we have to face our worst fears to realize what's important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-13 17:57:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12989436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxoftheDesert/pseuds/FoxoftheDesert
Summary: In her haste to reach Kara, who has inexplicably disappeared, Alex fiddles with Cisco's gismo.  What happens next will change her perceptions and challenge her to consider the unthinkable.





	1. Alex, meet Alex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alt!Alex gets a surprise visitor, and is given an opportunity to right a wrong she can never fix for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is brought to you by [Other You (Interdimensional Love Triangle)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9273188) by [fairchristabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairchristabel/pseuds/fairchristabel) and [floorplan91](https://archiveofourown.org/users/floorplan91/pseuds/floorplan91). Their _amazing_ story has pretty much co-opted the Kalex part of my brain. If you love Kalex, do yourself a favor and go read what's been posted so far. 
> 
> Still patiently awaiting an update, by the way... ***taps foot***

_It_ happens on an otherwise ordinary Thursday night. Alex is alone in the apartment, tumbler of whiskey clenched tight in one hand, clad in rumpled clothes she'd worn home from another long, monotonous day of towing the company line. Lately, the endless research projects that mostly occupy her time at the D.E.O. have provided little relief or comfort from the bleakness in which her life has been enshrouded. Even the adrenaline pumping missions that once gave her purpose only temporarily assuage the perpetual darkness she now occupies.

The scar tracing the shell of her left eye before cutting halfway down her cheek aches at the though of one such mission. She touches it absently with her free hand, remembering the blade that gifted it to her. Such an elegant weapon wielded by such a beautiful woman. If only she weren't a despicable monster, not that it matters anymore since Alex mercilessly put her down with her own blood-stained blade. That victory was one down, six to go, whereas now only one remains. After that mission, Alex came home riding an all-time high, just to have the euphoria bleed out of her upon glimpsing the framed picture she keeps on the coffee table. It's the one she normally stares at while getting hammered so that she never forgets why she's doing what she's doing or why her life has been reduced to a living hell only punctuated by spikes of joyous vengeance.

Every morning since the singular tragedy that redefined her is a struggle and every night is a battle to convince her own brain that prolonging her existence another day, hour, minute, or second is a worthwhile endeavor. To deal with the constant agony, she's started drinking heavily again – much to the disapproval of those who care about her, though she could care less what anyone thinks about her chosen method of coping with a trauma that, while nearly a year gone by, haunts her every waking thought.

Hovering nearby the eastern window, Alex dully observes the city below through blurry eyes. Having passed the exit to tipsytown a mile or so back, she initially dismisses the little sparkle of blue lightning she glimpses out of the corner of her eye, the one that starts dancing in the middle of her living room as if some folklore-ish elemental sprite, as a mere figment of her inebriated imagination. Never one to be a slouch holding her liquor, she has yet to hallucinate on whiskey alone, which is what she's sipping on at the moment. However, when the light-based aberration does not disappear some minutes later, her natural curiosity compels her to investigate.

Tumbler clutched tightly between both hands, she approaches hesitantly to within a few feet of the object. Along the way, she gives the stink eye to the bottle of booze resting on the kitchen counter now containing only a smidgen of liquid. Typically only straight vodka chasing down any garden variety hallucinogen can provoke the types of visual displays she is currently experiencing. And while not foreign to such combinations of late, she hasn't touched anything tonight but what the vastly overrated Mr. Daniels had to offer. She'd have preferred something Irish to cradle her descent into oblivion, but she's abandoned such pickiness since her life went to hell in a handbasket. These days, if her spirits are readily accessible and of a suitable proof to get her drunk, they're on the menu.

Now up close to where she can see the detail within the ball of brilliant light, Alex notes that it seems to consist of mainly dazzling particles of electricity that swirl about at every conceivable angle. She watches with keen if not drink-distorted interest as it bounces and gyrates in a show just for her.

Hypnotized by the magical display, she begins to ruminate on how she managed to reach this dismal point in her life. Again. Reduced to nothing more than a sloppy, degenerate lush whose alcohol addled brain is conjuring Lord of the Rings fantastical shit in the middle of her living room. She'd be ashamed at her state if she was capable of giving a damn. But she's not, and hasn't been in so long she can't imagine she ever will again.

At this point, she's already passed the point of no return, far beyond the miserable wretch she'd been when J'onn had so mercifully rescued her. Back then, a surefire prison sentence for D&D was the destination awaiting a pathetic excuse for a woman who'd been content to waste her life on whatever variety of depravity made available. Grateful was not an adequate term for how she'd felt once J'onn sobered her up and offered her a chance to straighten herself out, along with a job and funding to finish the doctorate program she'd nearly torpedoed on her meteoric descent to academic failure and self-destruction. Working her ass off to become the best Agent and the best Bio-engineer in the world was the least she could do to repay the kindness of a stranger who would one day become so much more than her boss.

For the past year, though, all she's done is wish she could go back to that fateful day and tell her benevolent savior where to stuff his secretly guilt-motivated charity. If only to spare herself the pain she's been living with every moment of every day, she'd take the jail cell, the rap sheet, and all the consequences that came along with being labeled a criminal and a malcontent and a bitter disappointment. Better to have drank, and drugged, and whored herself into an early grave than slog through another week in this hellish world of ceaseless torment, absent her one and only constant, her sole inspiration to do better and be better and to never stop fighting for what she believes in.

The sun has been forever extinguished from Alex's sky, and all she wants to do is crawl into the soft earth beneath the already inscribed tombstone she purchased after the funeral; she'd had it preemptively installed in expectation of her own impending interment. But she can't do that. She can't give up. Not yet. Not when the person responsible for destroying her only source of light in the otherwise perpetual darkness of existence are still roving the earth, foot loose and fancy free. The bastard killed the embodiment of everything that is good and perfect and pure and holy in this world, and Alex refuses to rest until she has extracted every last possible drop of recompense from him.

"What the hell?"

Alex suddenly goes stock still, staring in utter disbelief into the empty apartment. The little ball of energy is no longer dancing. Instead, it's initiated an intricate pattern of vibrations, beginning with a slow, steady thrum that hastens at an exponential pace. Eventually it accelerates into a blinding whir of movement beyond the perception of her human eyes, which widen in basal fright as a whining sound akin to an air raid siren begins to emanate from the orb, as if it is protesting its own peculiar existence.

Quite involuntarily, Alex finds herself backing away towards the outer block wall of the loft-style apartment. Self-preservation, she's discovered, is hardwired into the human brain and is incredibly difficult to override, even when one wishes more than anything to no longer preserve what most cherish above all else. Her survival instinct kicks in quite against her wishes, just in time to spare her from the terrific explosion of energy unleashed from the object's center that obliterates nearly everything within a four foot diameter. As it is, she's knocked back onto her ass, which sends her tumbler flying out her hand to shatter against the hardwood floor.

When the dust settles, she's wearing most of what she'd so recently been nursing. Shards of glass and wood are stuck in her hair, which is standing at odd angles even though there isn't much more there than the tomboyish pixie length she'd had it cut to as a reflection of how her life fell to pieces. She doesn't bother picking the debris out. How can she when she's too busy staring in utter disbelief at the woman now standing where the orb used to be only a second ago? A woman that looks shockingly familiar. Strike that. A woman that looks _exactly_ like her, only sporting the jaw-length bob she'd preferred pre-ruination.

Alex gapes at her doppelganger, who gapes back at her. A tense stalemate ensues during which both refuse to look away for fear that reality will begin to unravel all around them, sucking them into a grotesque, prolonged doom that is preferably avoidable. If Alex dies, she wants it to be quick and painless. A bullet through the brain stem fits the bill perfectly. Being slowly deconstructed by the consequences of the laws of physics having been violated in her living room? Not so much.

Nothing happens, though, to her relief. Everything is still intact, body parts, air integrity, molecular cohesion, gravity, etc. Reality itself remains unaffected. Einstein does not roll over in his grave. All is well with the world all the way down to the subatomic level. Well, for the most part anyway.

Knowing that for the moment there is no immediate hazard to the fabric of the universe, or to her person, save for the odd Mexican standoff she's found herself in with another her originating from another Earth, Alex lends voice to her incredulous astonishment. Coincidentally, she utters it at the exact same time as her counterpart.

" _Holy shit!_ "

For a tense moment they both stare at one another with bulging eyes and paralyzed limbs. But then Alex sees a flash of panic in her alternate's eyes and she snaps out of the daze. Even through a haze of alcohol, she is the fastest draw west of the Rockies. Six months worth of obsessive practice at the range preparing for her final mission has paid off. She has her energy pistol in her hand and set to stun before the woman so rudely wearing her face can recover her wits enough to even reach for the pistol holster strapped to her thigh.

"Gotcha." Alex gives her doppelganger a crooked grin as the arcing pulse from her weapon slams into the woman's chest. Brown eyes bulge comically wide as the intruder convulses from the shock to her central nervous system designed to essentially short-circuit it, thus forcing a soft reboot of the brain. The woman falls to the floor a second later, inanimate and harmless as a mouse.

"Well, well," Alex says as she hovers over the prone form of her alternate. "I wonder what you're doing here? And if you'll even tell me should I ask?"

To answer those questions, she sets about restraining her uninvited guest to the old, unused radiator that was installed during the aged building's construction. Zip ties would ordinarily suit her need fine and dandy, but if this...other her is anything like _her_ , such standard measures won't be enough. To ensure her captive doesn't slip out of the restraints, she double-binds the woman's wrists with the zip ties and then independently fastens each arm to the radiator with cuffs. Overkill, perhaps, but one can never be too careful, particularly with one's own doppelganger.

Once she's satisfied the rude interloper isn't going anywhere, Alex pulls up a chair from the kitchen, turns it backward facing the prisoner, then plops down heavily into it. Elbows resting on the back, she studies her quarry quietly, mind swimming with all sorts of thoughts, some jumbled and some startlingly clear. Mostly she tries to reason out with little success as to why her intrepid counterpart has ventured so foolishly into her world.

Alex hasn't made much headway when the prisoner begins to come to some five or so minutes later. She observes the way the woman peels her eyes open after a series of languid groans. Once she's blinked her vision clear, she carefully studies her environment in the precise, analytical method ingrained into Alex via intense training at the D.E.O. The reaction reinforces the wisdom of her decision to go overboard on the restraints. Her duplicate, she deduces, is likely a member of her Earth's D.E.O. as well. She'll have to be cautious, then, lest a lackadaisical approach afford the invader a window of escape.

"'Mornin' sunshine," Alex greets when cold brown eyes fix upon her. For someone just coming around from enough amperage to knock a Helgrammite on its ass, the woman in stripped down black tactical gear zeroes in on her with remarkably laser-sharp focus.

"Which Earth am I on?" the woman asks.

Alex grins widely. Clearly this Alex Danvers is every bit as perceptive as she is. "The only one that matters at the moment. Mine," she says, warning lacing her tone. "Best remember that before you decide to try something sneaky. That said, for the sake of politeness, you are currently on Earth Ninety-six."

The other Alex shakes her head ruefully. "Damn. I knew better than to mess with that stupid gadget."

 _Interesting_ , Alex thinks. "So this little visitation was accidental?"

"Obviously," says the other her. To avoid confusion, Alex decides to refer to the woman as 'Ally' in her head from here on out. "I was experimenting with a device my sister was given on another Earth she visited," Ally continues. "Earth Prime. I introduced a small current into one of the circuits trying to figure out how it worked, and it just...sort of happened? It was a stupid thing to do, but my sister disappeared again without telling me. I assumed she went to Prime to help out her friends there."

She pauses to shake her head ruefully before resuming her surprisingly honest explanation. "Anyway, she left the damn thing behind, and there are only three reasons she would do that. One, she did it to be an ass, knowing I would find it and stress out over her vanishing without a word again. Which is unlikely because she's _Kara_. Two, she forgot it, which isn't out of the question, also because she's _Kara_. Or three, she was taken against her will. If that last option has even a thread of possibility to it, I wasn't about to sit on my ass while she's in trouble. I was desperate to get to her. I need to know if she's okay. So, I poked around where I probably shouldn't have, and here I am."

Alex nods in understanding at the explanation. The mentions of Kara send pangs of agony through her heart. "Here you are, indeed. Home and yet not home," she says, wielding that pain in her words and actions as an idea blossoms in her head. This happenstance, however unorthodox, may very well provide her a chance to do one last selfless act of good before she leaves this world behind. And for another version of herself at that. It's just too juicy an opportunity to pass up. Eyes glinting, she sweeps her arm behind her toward the apartment at large. "Do you recognize this place?"

"It's Kara's apartment," Ally says, then suddenly perks up. "Is she here by any chance? My Kara, I mean?"

Alex glares at the woman, on edge at Kara's name being spoken in her presence. She'd forbidden it after The Incident. "Why should your Kara be here on my Earth when you said she was likely to be on Prime? And even if she was, why should I tell you?"

Ally returns the glare with one of her own every bit as fearsome. Alex might have been intimidated had she any reason to value her life. But she doesn't. So she isn't.

"I was just asking," Ally says. "I only assumed she was on Prime. That doesn't mean she is. As for why you should tell me...I'd think you of all people should know how much her safety means to me. I mean, you are me, so you should understand how far I'm willing to go to get her back home where she belongs. Come to think of it, if she's not here, why can't you just help me get to Earth Prime so I can kick her ass before I drag her home?"

Alex huffs as if aggravated by the request for aid. She's already made up her mind to help _herself_. The other woman just doesn't need to know that yet.

"Isn't it rude on your world to ask favors of someone you've just met?" she asks, being deliberately contentious.

Ally growls, openly frustrated. "Is it rude…? Someone I just met…? Again, I'm _you_."

"Obviously." Alex tilts her head as she feigns studying her nails. "The question stands as relevant."

"Jesus! Is this what it's like dealing with me? If so, I repent of my every sin."

Alex smiles at the other woman grimly. "If you're anything like me at all, a day long prayer session at the Wailing Wall won't save your soul. Best get used to the idea of spending an eternity in hell."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, there," Ally says around a derisive scoff. "Jeez. Morbid much? And just so you know, I don't believe in hell, nor should you if your parents were atheists like mine."

"It's good for you that they were," Alex says, meaning it. "Unfortunately for me, Dad refused to let go of Judaism for Mom the way yours evidently did. He practiced until the day he died. So did I. I stopped after, but it's hard to shake something so ingrained. You know, they say Catholics are the ones that hold on to their guilt, but he sure left me with plenty enough to sort through."

"I don't think religion has anything to do with our guilt over Dad," says Ally, expression turning pained.

Alex hums her agreement. Though her alternate clearly has not let go of what happened, she'd stopped blaming herself for her dad's demise years ago. The burden she carried now made Jeremiah Danvers' death seem so insignificant in comparison. Oh, how she longed to return to the days when all she'd been mourning was the loss of her primary role model, her best friend...her father. She'd been so unforgivably naive then to believe her world was coming to an end with his loss. If only she'd known how impossibly worse it would be to lose...

Alex shakes her head to prevent herself going any further down that gaping abyss of misery. "As for the favor," she says, changing the subject back to a more pertinent and less agonizing line, "it sounds to me like you were tampering with a trans-dimensional wormhole generator."

Ally's demeanor perks up in an instant. "You know what it is, then. Great! Have one handy?"

Alex shrugs indifferently. "Not here. But my boss keeps one secured in our facility in case of emergency. I could, perhaps, be persuaded to cajole him into loaning it to me on your behalf. That is, if you would be willing to answer a question of _mine_..."

Ally takes less than three heartbeats to mull over the proposition before she's nodding sharply. "Deal. I'll answer any question you have if it means I can get Kara back. What do you want to know?"

Narrowing her eyes at her alternate, Alex grips the back of the chair. Time to delve into the nuts and bolts of this woman and get a lay of the land. How she proceeds from here will have a great deal to do with what answer she receives.

"Have you told her that you love her yet?" she asks.

"Told who?" Ally says, looking a bit confused. "You'll have to be more specific...unless you're talking about Maggie? In which case, yes, I have. We're engaged, in fact."

Never have two syllables provoked more disgust in Alex than those two beginning with 'M' and ending with 'e'. A corkscrew of entangled hatred and grief tailspins down her spine and she shudders at the effect it produces on her stomach. She only just manages to hold down her liquid supper. But the urge to go on a destructive rampage is one she cannot restrain, so rather than devolve into hysterical violence as she wants, she opts to vent by erupting out her chair and then tossing it violently against the wall directly to Ally's left. To avoid being struck by fragments of the now broken piece of furniture, the woman reels away as far as she can considering her restraints.

"No!" Alex rails as she destroys the chair and then proceeds to toss the mostly drained liquor bottle against the same wall. Ally curls in on herself as glass rains down on her head. "Just...no! Don't mention that name to me again. Not ever!"

" _Yeesh_ , alright," Ally says, eyes bulging with a fright that isn't all rooted in Alex's actions. No, it's a look that says this woman has as many anger issues as she does, only that she hasn't be deprived yet of her reason to repress them. "What'd she do to you? On my Earth, things are great with us."

Spent of her acrimony, Alex walks over to the liquor stained wall and slides forlornly down it. She tucks her knees up under her chin, feeling the beginnings of a despair that could so easily consume her.

"Things were great with us, too," she says, throat horse from her shouting, "until they weren't. Until she...until she..."

"Until she what?"

Alex grunts miserably. "None of your damn business. Just answer the question."

Ally had prodded gently enough, but Alex wasn't in the mood for indulgence. Which seems to intensify the woman's aggravation.

"I told you I need more than that to go on!"

Being ignorant has never been a trait Alex would describe herself as possessing, except in one area, in her heart, and for one particular person. "Kara, okay!" she grates out, finding it hard still to admit out loud how she really feels about the girl she'd been so tragically, mistakenly assigned as _sister._ "Have you told her?"

Now Ally appears truly befuddled. Her brows draw in tightly as her forehead furrows into deep rows. "Our sister? Of course I've told her. Barely a day goes by that I don't. Why do you ask?"

A noise of utter exasperation tears free from Alex's throat. That trait she'd just thought of flits across her mind. The woman is plain _ignorant!_ "God! Is every version of me so dense?" She sighs with heart-heavy lament for her equally obtuse facsimile.

Was this the fate of every Alex Danvers? To be gifted with the most extravagantly beautiful creature to ever trod the shores of Earth only ever realize the fundamental depth of their bond when it was too late to act upon it? To be left with nothing but the crushing knowledge that one simply cannot survive without the other because they are soulmates, true loves, or whatever sappy fairy tale moniker can be applied to two people whose hearts and minds and spirits are so inextricably linked? Is every Alex so blind to recognize that the blazing sun bottled up inside a cheerful blonde Kryptonian shines just for her? Or so emotionally stunted as to remain deluded to the happiness that's been available to her every minute of every day since a thirteen year old refugee with seemingly infinite stores of love within her heart landed in the front yard? The two Alex's currently inhabiting Earth Ninety-six certainly are both stunted and blind. And if that is any indication as to the state of the other infinite Earths, Alex would consider it the ultimate tragedy.

Eyes flitting up to her meet the same haunted – just slightly less so – brown ones she sees every morning in the mirror, Alex heaves a defeated exhale. "You don't even realize, do you?"

Ally's brows are still furled tightly. "Realize what?"

"How lucky you are to be sheltered within your enviable ignorance. She's right there in front of you and you're content to let labels neither of you chose define your lives and rob you of the potential for more happiness than any human should ever have wasted upon them."

"What the hell are you going on about?"

Alex sighs, then runs a hand through her short-cropped hair. "Obviously you're every bit as deluded as I was. I'm just gonna to have to show you, then." Before Ally can even utter a frantic protest, she draws her weapon and renders the woman unconscious once again.

There is only one problem Alex can see regarding her impromptu decision. How the hell is she supposed to lug her physically identical guest all the way down to the ground level and manhandle the dead weight into her SUV? She paces in her living room, scratching her head and stroking her chin until an idea lands out of left field. Snatching her phone off the coffee table, she dials up the one person in the world she knows will help her without question.

"Hey," she says when J'onn answers with his standard fare amiable gruffness, "care to give me a hand with a little side project? There's an unopened package of double-stuffed Oreos in it if you can be here within five minutes."

Five minutes later there is a steady rap upon her door. Alex's lips spread into a Cheshire grin. "Works every time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a pre-finished piece. I'm not sure when I'll post the next part, but it'll be soonish, depends on if I wanna get it posted within one week or two. Right now I'm leaning toward two.
> 
> As for the subject material, it may seem repetitive considering my last entry, and perhaps needlessly grim. This story was written first, though, and has been something I've piddled on for a long, long time. Pretty much since the aforementioned story, Other You, was first posted. That said, I can promise that the ending to this one is in no way vague and is far happier. Or at least I think so. Y'all can be the judges. 
> 
> Until next time. See ya when I see ya!


	2. A Graveside Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex has to face her worst fear come true...in a sense.

When Alex regains consciousness, the first thing she notices is that she's chilled to the bone and a biting wind is cutting at what little skin is exposed in her tactical gear. Her entire face stings at the abuse. Through bleary eyes, she glances about, noticing immediately that she's no longer in Kara's apartment – well, the Earth Ninety-six Kara's apartment – and that, even worse, she is approximately eight thousand feet in the air. Which explains why her nose is a block of ice and her ears feel as if a thousand tiny needles are relentlessly poking into them.

Soaring unwillingly towards some unknown destination, Alex feels panic emerge at the fringes of her awareness.

"Calm yourself, Alexandra."

Alex immediately recognizes the voice of the alien currently holding her within an inescapable grip. "J'onn?"

"Yes," he says without glancing down at her. His sonorous Martian voice rumbles through his chest, soothing the harsh edges of her fear. J'onn's fatherly timbre has always been a balm to her, and it seems that effect translates across universes. "There's no need for alarm," he continues, as if sensing her continued disquiet. "She will not harm you, nor will I. Her intent is merely to give you perspective you currently lack, something I happen to agree would be to your benefit if you are anything like her, which I am inclined to assume you are."

"Couldn't she have shown me a picture instead?" Alex grouses against the leather of his uniform, which is, like the Alex Danvers she encountered, only slightly altered from the version she's used to. It's even less colorful than back home, having no red upon the insignia. Just a depressing matte black, which reminds her less of the kind Martian she's come to associate with family, and more of her alternate self's oppressively dark demeanor.

There was a time Alex believed she'd never meet a person with more ghosts haunting them than she did. In terms of loss, there were plenty of people who'd endured worse than her, but none of them had allowed their grief to fester until it had contaminated every inch of their being. J'onn had channeled his mourning into helping persecuted aliens find safe harbor in a world that hated them for merely existing. Oh, but not her. Instead of turning her pain into something productive, she slipped headlong into a deep, dark cavern of anger, bitterness, and callous disregard for everything and everyone in her life. Except for Kara. She'd kept loving Kara even then, which explains why there was something, however puny it was, for J'onn to rescue when she hit rock bottom.

The other Alex, though, has no light whatsoever remaining in her life. Dead brown eyes are set into sockets far too sunken to be considered healthy. Sleep is obviously a foreign concept to her here, which isn't all that surprising given their apparently similar backgrounds. For Alex, the insomnia started just after her dad died, so she assumes the same is true for her counterpart. The athletic build they share has, in this world, been honed to extremes Alex at her most neurotic didn't dare strive for. Her Earth Ninety-six alternate has clearly fashioned herself into a living weapon, and the pervasive emptiness in her eyes tells the story as to what purpose lies behind the molding. The woman is a killer, plain and simple, with little redeeming value – more deadly than Alex ever dreamed of being, in addition to being more unstable. The combination of all these factors has the hallmarks of a catastrophe in the making.

That the only person emotionally worse off than her is another version of herself means that technically her belief that she's the darkest person she's ever known is not flawed. If anything, it's only been confirmed, which doesn't make her feel any better at all. She now knows that she's not yet sunk so low as to meet the floor of her potential depravity, and that is the most terrifying idea of all.

"I'm afraid to get the full effect," J'onn says, breaking Alex's morose contemplation, "you must see this in person."

As reticent as she is to trust Alex Ninety-six, she does not harbor the same doubts with this other J'onn. For all intents and purposes, he seems to be exactly the same as the one she'd just left behind shouting at her, " _Don't touch that, Alex!_ " Maybe just a little more sad. The other Alex is a different story. Beyond the tom-boyish pixie haircut, early afternoon drunkenness, and the ragged white scar which marred the left side of her face, the woman keeps a dangerous glint to her eyes that Alex at her absolute worst after her father's disappearance never saw in herself. Something has broken this Earth's version of her in way that is deeply unsettling.

If J'onn had not given her his personal reassurance, Alex would be noping the hell out at the first opportunity. But if the gentle Martian insisted this outing was for her benefit, she was willing to at least entertain her alternate's little session of show-and-tell. For a while, anyway.

"If you says so..." she says. To avoid the icy slipstream gnawing at her skin, she tucks herself closer to J'onn and clamps her eyes shut.

Some time later when they've landed, Alex pries her lids back open with some difficulty due to how her lashes have lightly frosted over. J'onn doesn't burn as hot as Kara does to entirely ward off the effects of flight at altitude. Lightly shivering, she touches her feet to the ground as J'onn keeps her steady. The look he gives her is a strange one, sorrowful and yet hopeful all at the same time.

"For your sake, I pray you learn from this," he says. "It would grieve me for her cavernous suffering to extend beyond the planes of this universe." And with that cryptic statement, he shoots off into the air once more, leaving Alex alone and cold and a more scared than she's willing to admit.

Calling upon her training for fortitude, she brushes off that momentary bout of weakness, squares her shoulders, and turns around to face down her own worst enemy. Only she's met with a sight that steals her breath away. J'onn has brought her to the National City Cemetery. But why?

Dread forms tiny, excruciating knots her chest, and it is only with much difficulty that she's able to force her legs to move toward the motionless figure standing in the near distance at the direct center of the cemetery. She paces slowly forward, eyes flitting down to markers engraved with the names of various individuals, some whose deaths were recent while others were as distant as shortly preceding the First World War. Once trembling from the cold, Alex is now quaking from the terrible anticipation mounting at what revelation lies ahead.

As she draws close to her alternate, she begins to notice that the woman appears to be crumpling in upon herself, as if a black hole has formed inside her soul and gravity is working it's wicked magic upon the physical portion of her body. Arms hugging across her midsection, she gazes blankly at a statue that her small frame had partially hidden so that Alex only sees it's full features when she's up close.

Despite it being only life-sized, the memorial dominates the area, and with its painstaking attention to detail, there is no mistaking the person it depicts.

"Oh, my God..." Alex gasps aloud, sucking in a huge lungful of air. Her eyes begin to burn as she stares, stricken with horror, at a feminine figure so textbook flawless that she could recognize it any crowd, no matter the size. It's Supergirl in all of her heroic glory, posed in her trademark stance: sculpted chin proudly turned up toward the sky, lush mane of hair gorgeously tussled by the wind, fists at her hips so that her arms form opposing triangles, and her muscular legs spread shoulder width apart. If the statue is any indication, the only thing that was different about this Earth's Supergirl is that her uniform did not include a skirt, but rather sported sleek leggings of the same design as her cousin. Otherwise, the details are identical and intricately captured, from the shape of her lips, to the cut of her cheeks, and the width and length of her nose; hell, even the little teardrop scar next to her left eyebrow is plainly visible.

That scar in particular holds Alex's attention, reeling her mind back to when her sister used to need her more than anything or anyone. Particularly at night. Kara often had trouble with nightmares of witnessing Krypton blow up that usually also featured her parents being incinerated in grotesque slow motion. There were also struggles with controlling her powers, particularly when puberty hit, that robbed her of the ability to nod off. Sometimes, though, she was simply having a bad night where she couldn't turn her advanced alien brain off or couldn't escape the awful grief and stress that accompanied being, or so everyone thought at the time, the only surviving female of her species. On those nights when Kara was restless, or trying to cry silently so she wouldn't be a bother to Alex, the only absolutely effective method to calm her down was for Alex to invade her space for some quality snuggle time.

Frankly, it's kind of bad to admit, but Alex used to look forward those nights, used to revel in being so necessary to someone aside from her parents. As young as she was, she'd known even then that she was Kara's favorite person, that Kara's mental and emotional health depended upon her ability to stay strong and to be a rock and a haven upon which her alien girl could always find stability and safety. The thing was, unlike when Kara first arrived, by the time they'd grown close enough for Alex's presence to a remedy for Kara's every ailment, she wanted it that way. Still does if she's being brutally honest with herself. Few memories are more precious to her than those in which she used to lay on her side, Kara facing her, lovingly tracing that lovely little scar with the tip of her finger while she gently hummed a tune about sunshine she will forever associate with Kara until the troubled girl was lulled to sleep.

How she wishes sometimes they could go back to that! No one has ever shared in her life and owned her heart like Kara. No one ever will. There are occasions where she yearns so keenly for their intimate closeness that it approaches the point of embarrassment; but even then, she refuses to take the steps to fix what's been broken when she has no one to blame but herself for it's absence. She'd become so enamored with discovering her sexuality and falling for Maggie that she lost perspective of what truly matters in her life. Nothing is more important to her than Kara, and that she'd lost sight of that even for a second is cause for a brand new infusion of self-loathing.

" _Is that what Ninety-six has been trying to convey_ _all_ _along?_ " she thinks, now visibly shaking, although it's less from the cold than from the shock of what she's seeing and it's potential applications to her own life.

Heart pulsing in her ears, Alex glances at her anguish-distorted facsimile. The fatalistic woman's attention is still fixed upon the same spot. She follows brown eyes identical to her own, and when she catches sight of the familiar emblem emblazoned upon the gargantuan and artistically designed marble gravestone just beneath the statue, she has to bite back the urge to vomit.

The great crest of the honorable House of El is emblazoned upon it, as is a bold epitaph etched directly below:

 _Here Lies_ _Kara Zor-El, Last Daughter of Krypton and Beloved Hero of National City._

_May She Rest In Peace Alongside Her Kin Within Rao's Eternal Light._

Something happens to Alex then that she can't explain, as if the words are a savage punctuation to the point the statue had begun to make. Irrationally, she begins to conflate her counterpart's loss with her own Kara. Before she can even brace herself against the surge, a typhoon of sorrow inundates her, drowning her beneath waves that climb to immeasurable heights before plunging downward at terminal velocity to crush her beneath an inexorable tide. Her breath comes in great heaving gasps due to the vice clamped about her lungs, and her heart begins hammering so violently within her breast that she fears she might be having a premature heart attack.

The emotional response, she dimly understands, is a window into what might await her should her worst nightmares come true. The effect will prove to be an indelible one imprinted forever within the volume of her memory.

Alex's mind swirls madly as she tries to process all that she's seeing and feeling. _Is this how it would feel to lose her? Like everything that ever mattered to me has been taken away? Like I've entered an eternal night where the sun will never shine again? Like I'm dying right along with her?_

"You know...if I didn't envy you so much, I'd hate you."

Alex is startled out of her misplaced grief by the other Alex's dulled voice, which is disturbingly loud against the ghoulish silence of the cemetery. She hadn't even realized she was on her knees until gazing up at her alternate through wet, matted lashes. Alex Ninety-six is still staring dully at the tombstone, transfixed as if in the bony grips of a malefic spell. Even so, the woman's carefully projected detachment is betrayed by a trickle of tears falling uninterrupted from her eyes.

"There was a time I didn't realize how much she meant to me either," adds Alter-Alex.

Alex rises to her feet, suddenly indignant at the woman's false and outrageous assumption. She swipes harshly at her cheeks to clear away the dampness. "T-that's not true! I _know_ how much she means to me!"

Alex Ninety-six sniffles as she turns to meet Alex's unyielding glare, brow raised in challenge at an assertion so boldly made. "And yet you told me not an hour ago that you were engaged to Maggie Sawyer."

Confused by the association, Alex frowns sullenly. "I don't understand what Maggie has to do with my love for Kara."

Throwing her head back, the pixie-haired woman emits a prolonged groan of acute exasperation. "And to think, according to ever conceivable test, my IQ is near the top end of the spectrum! I'd never believe it having met your pathetically delusional ass."

Alex defensively crosses her arms over her chest, frown transforming into a heated glare at the calculated slight. "Hey! Whatever problem you're having right now, whatever crisis you're dealing with? Don't take it out on me. Okay? And let's be honest, I can tell you're an unmitigated disaster. I can smell the whiskey on you."

Which is true. The pungent aroma is easily detectable even outside in the cool, heavy air. She'd smelled it the moment she got dumped on this Earth, and that it's still so prominent over an hour later tells Alex that her doppelganger was well on the way to being shitfaced when she arrived. Therefore, the woman has no right to be casting stones.

"What does my current state of inebriation have to do with anything?" the other Alex asks contentiously. "For your information, I do my best work when drunk." The wicked gleam in her eye tells Alex which particular strain of work is being referred to: the 'wet' variety.

"No doubt," she says, cautious now that she knows she's in the presence of a more prodigious killer than she'd ever dreamt she could be. "Anyway, I'm just saying, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge me just because you're an alternate version of me. Clearly you have your own problems just as I have mine. And while our DNA is undeniably identical, I'm not you. I've done nothing to you to warrant such baseless aspersions."

"Yes, you have," the other woman fires back, cheeks reddening furiously. "That you are even with that…that _woman..._ is an unforgivable offense to me!"

Now Alex is visibly bristling and hastening toward the precipice of her own rage. "What the hell did Maggie ever do to you to make you hate her so much?"

Alex Ninety-six lets out a derisive bark of laughter. "What did she do? _What did she do?!_ She decided to play the hero when I expressly told her to stop poking her nose where it didn't belong, and that one moment of selfishness cost me everything. _Everything!_ "

Alex is far too incensed to make the connection at first. "So, she pulled a patented Maggie Sawyer. What's new? Then what? Let me guess, she got herself into trouble, and then someone got hurt saving her? Some you lov...Oh." It dawns on Alex then with awful, gut-clenching clarity. Her eyes automatically seek out the gravestone. And there the answer is, etched in black scrawl, marking the resting place of the most vital person in Alex's admittedly tiny universe. As if she's been sucker punched, she bends over at the waist, so stricken that she has to use her arms as braces upon her knees to prop her torso up. "Oh! Oh, God. Oh, my God."

So in this world Maggie's patented reckless streak got Kara killed. Suddenly her other self's loathing of a woman who should be almost as close to her heart as Kara makes so much more sense.

"Yes. _Oh, my God,_ " the other woman says, inflection dripping with mocking condescension. Her face twists into a tortured grimace. "That's about all I could say for five minutes while I held Kara, helpless to stop her from bleeding out, a hole in her chest put there by a weapon fashioned specifically to kill Kryptonians. The response team was too late to do anything, not that it would have helped. Even if they'd been there a second after she collapsed into my arms, they couldn't have saved her. I had to watch her die."

"Shit!" Alex can hardly fathom so atrocious a scenario – refuses to actually. The very thought of it threatens to break her into a million shards of glass. Of course, she doesn't really have to think much of it, thankfully, since Kryptonians are pretty much unkillable. She remembers then about Kara's cousin, how he'd died once battling one of Lex's abominations. Only he came back to life a few days later once his solar-charged cells repaired.

Chancing a glance up at her alternate, Alex poses the question suddenly gnawing at her gut. "Why didn't she come back like Clark did?"

The other woman's grimace is the same as Eliza's was the day she'd told Alex her father was never coming back home. "How could she? Lex Luthor may be a sick, xenophobic megalomaniac, but he's no fool. He designed the weapon to kill earth-empowered Kryptonians, one in particular. Permanently. He needed to test it first, though, and knew Supergirl would do anything to save the woman to whom her beloved sister was betrothed. So when Maggie went snooping against orders, he snatched her, then set up a trap that Kara willingly walked into before I even had a chance to stop her. The projectile he shot her with disintegrated on impact, and the shards dissolved into her bloodstream, poisoning her system down to the cellular level. No amount of filtering or sunbathing could purge it all. I could have made Kal fly her into the sun and it wouldn't have revived her."

That information rattles Alex down to the marrow of her bones. So there is a way to kill Kryptonians without the possibility of them resurrecting? All of her worry over Kara's vulnerability to kryptonite had been her drive to shield her sister from as much pain as possible. Kara has already lost so much, endured so much more than anyone ought to, that the idea she might suffer physically is intolerable to Alex. Especially after initially believing Kara to be all but impervious to any form of violence. Learning of the existence of kryptonite had shattered that little bubble, but this revelation is the sort that will have Alex wanting to strap Kara down to a chair with kryptonite-infused cuffs and never let her out of the house again.

Protecting Kara is her lifelong mission, the entire purpose behind her existence. To have tangible evidence she could fail, and likely will if the parallels with this Earth were any predictor, might very well drive her mad with anxiety in the near future.

"I'm sorry," she says, for the first time truly getting an idea of the sort of excruciating pain her alternate is living with on a daily basis. It's unimaginable, really.

In exchange for the sympathy, Alex Ninety-six peers at her sharply. "Are you?"

Alex stumbles back a step, as if struck with a clenched fist. Is the woman actually insinuating she doesn't care that there is a version of Kara – the single most important person to her – who died so young when she ought to have outlived Alex by an order of magnitude nearing infinity? The yellow sun to which Earth belongs should by all rights keep Kara eternally youthful so long as it remains in it's primary phase. Even what's left of the dust Alex has decayed into should be reconstituted into some other organic life form by then. Since first learning of Kryptonian longevity, she's never felt the need to contemplate what a life without Kara might be like for her. She's always just assumed Kara would be there until the end, that it would be Kara holding her hand when she was old and wrinkled upon her deathbed. That her assumption might be proven false is horrifying.

And there is another consideration that makes the tragedy all the more incomprehensible. Namely, that the greater universe has been deprived of even one Kara is cause for unceasing lamentation. From Alex's perspective, Kara is the most precious creature to ever exist, worth saving no matter the sacrifice and worth protecting no matter the cost. There is not a person living or dead or yet to exist that Alex would trade for her. Not Einstein. Not Newton. Not van Leeuwenhok. Not J'onn. Not Eliza. Not Jeremiah. Not Maggie. And certainly not herself. No one has equivalent value to what can be found in Kara's heart and mind and, if Alex ever believed one existed she does where Kara is concerned, soul. How, then, could this version of her – albeit a broken one – doubt that when she undoubtedly feels the same?

"What kind of question is that?" she asks accusingly. "Of course I am! I love Kara with all my heart. I can't imagine the pain you're living through."

Alex Part Deux scoffs at the platitude. "You really can't, because you still don't get it."

Alex growls out her frustration, tempted to stamp her feet with childish obstinance, similar to how Kara would. "Get what?"

The other woman sighs, dramatically rolling her eyes. "Follow me." She then turns without another word and begins weaving her way through the grounds.

Alex follows closely behind, serpentining through headstones belonging to deceased denizens of the city she has grown to love so very much. Mainly because of Kara. National City has a special place in Kara's heart, so it does in Alex's, too, which informs her a great deal about her subconscious biases and how disturbingly far they slant toward a single individual.

When they stop in front of a set of headstones some hundred yards from the monument, Alex feels her chest curl into a ball that is so tight she fears for the structural integrity of her sternum. Before her are two markers, each engraved with the name of a Danvers. One of them is her own incomplete headstone, which is strange in and of itself, just not enough to draw her attention away from the marker her focus lasers in on. It reads:

_Kara Danvers_

_1988-2017_

_Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Friend_

_You Were The Light Of Our Lives_

Alex shudders as she bends over at the waist, sick enough this time that there is no holding back the wave of bile climbing up her throat. She scampers away to expel her meager breakfast against a nearby oak tree.

"She could have been so much more than the last two," her alternate says upon Alex's wobbly return.

After wiping her mouth of the left-over sick, Alex eyes the woman with some fair amount of dread. She thinks she has a pretty good idea now of what point is being so thoroughly and callously driven home. But as much as she doesn't want to hear it, as much as it terrifies her to even consider, discovering Kara is dead here has rendered her incapable of resisting her curiosity, especially when her other self paid so steep a price to learn this lesson herself.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks, needing the other woman to be direct, to be courageous because Alex can't be. Not about this. Not about the one thing she's always secretly desired but never allowed herself to even fantasize about lest shame drive her into an inescapable depression.

"It means that she was never meant to fit into the neat little box Mom and Dad wanted to stuff her into," says her doppelganger. "That she was more than a ready-made second child who dropped serendipitously into their lives. They didn't even stop to consider me, what I might think...what I might _feel."_ She veers off then, expression growing distant as if she's seeing the past play before her very eyes in living color. As the memories shift, a wistful smiles turns her lips up. "Kara has always been radiantly beautiful, you know. Even so young, she overshadowed everyone else, was perfection wrapped in sunshine, a goddess pretending to be human for everyone else's benefit except her own. At nearly fourteen, I was already dealing with being...different. With feeling things I convinced myself were wrong. Only I didn't realize Vicky wasn't the only reason I was feeling those things or that I was so mean to Kara at first because of how inexplicably _drawn_ to her I was. I think I've always known subconsciously that she was the undisputed love of my life. I mean, how could anyone ever mean more to me than her? It's impossible, right? She's my sunshine, my light in the darkness, my bright morning star. But unbeknownst to me, she was also my first crush."

Alex was right with her alternate all the way up until that last sentence, which floors her. The implications of that statement cause her heart to begin hammering inside her skull.

"Uh...are you seriously implying what I think you are?"

Her alternate stares back, nonplussed by Alex's reaction. "I am. And if the way I can see your heart hammering through that vein in your neck is any indication, deep down you know it too."

Alex gawks in utter astonishment at the suggestion, mouth hanging open like a fish on a hook. She's been caught, only she just doesn't know it quite yet. Like always, and especially where Kara is concerned, her brain is yet to catch up to her heart.

"No. Just...no. She's my _sister_!" she says after recovering from her shock. Later on, she'll boil down her stubborn denial to long-festering guilt masquerading as indignation.

"And she wasn't mine?" Alex Ninety-six asks, one dark brow arched. "Believe me, I got told enough. Told myself enough, too, until it finally stuck. I pushed my feelings down so hard I convinced myself I couldn't possible be gay, just so I could more effectively avoid the wrongness of them. But when she was in my arms, veins in her neck showing through and pulsing with green poison, blood gurgling up into her mouth, streaming from her nose, even trickling from her eyes, it all came rushing back. I knew then that she was my whole world, my primary reason for existing, and that I would rather die than live without her. It didn't take long to figure out that foster sisters aren't supposed to feel that way about each other. I certainly didn't feel that way about Maggie. Ever. That's when I knew for sure."

For the second time in nearly as many seconds, Alex stares in disbelief. "You can't be serious."

Her doppelganger doesn't bat an eyelash. "But I am. And to my utter astonishment and profound horror, I wasn't alone in feeling that way." She pauses then, gives Alex a loaded gaze before adding, "Do you want to know what Kara's dying declaration to me was?"

Alex can only nod dumbly, fighting against emotions welling up from somewhere in her subconscious brain that she has been, up to the present, unaware of. Emotions for Kara that are nearly as old as their relationship. An attraction that so shamed her she stopped going to the beach with Kara for a while when her sister's breasts started to become noticeable in the colorful bikinis she preferred.

"I'll never forget it," the other Alex says, unmistakable grief written all over her. "She hardly got the words out through the blood filling her throat and compressing her lungs, but she was so determined. ' _I've been in love with you since I was sixteen,_ ' she said, ' _but was too afraid to say anything. I wish I'd told you sooner. But even if I never got to be with you that way, you'll always be the love of my life. I'll be waiting for you in Rao's light._ ' She slipped away after that. I kept my fingers on her pulse until her heart stopped beating. I don't remember much after that except for wailing like a banshee and fighting tooth and nail against J'onn as he tried to pull me away from her body."

She takes a shuddering breath and swipes a shaky hand through her short hair. The scar on the left side of her face glimmers in the moonlight. "I didn't speak to anyone for days after, or during the funeral. Not even Mom. I just couldn't. I knew if I opened my mouth there would only be more screaming, more unrelenting grief, and I wasn't ready to face what I'd just lost. After that, I hid in my lab and worked myself to the bone on what should have been riveting projects that suddenly meant nothing to me anymore. For days, I didn't eat or sleep or take breaks. Eventually J'onn found me in the floor next to my microscopes. I'd passed out from exhaustion. He flew me home, spent the night with me, held me whenever I woke up crying incoherently for Kara. The next day is a blur. I think I kinda shut down. But I do know I spent the entire week after that in an alcoholic fog. Probably would have drank myself into oblivion if Kal hadn't paid me a fortuitous visit."

Pausing briefly, she hums thoughtfully, and the corner of her lips curl up with dark humor. "I've never been as pleasantly surprised as I was to see the venerable bastion of optimism brought so low. Gone was the blue, red, gold uniform. In it's place, a harsh black one that matched this new Superman's gloomy, frightening rage. I guess after Lois and his unborn child were murdered by Lex only two months earlier, seeing his cousin's corpse was the straw that broke the camel's back. His no killing policy went out the window when Kara died." She shrugs, disaffected. "Can't say I wasn't glad of it. His new, less wholesome crusade gave me a purpose. Avenging Kara. We swore an oath that day to see justice done, and to hell with the consequences. So while he hunts for our prey, I keep my head down in anticipation of good news."

Alex clutches at her stomach as if to keep herself from falling apart, or to keep a second load of bile from spilling from her lips. Whichever comes first. The idea that Clark Kent, the only person aside from Kara whose inherent goodness seemed irreproachable, could ever resemble the monster that's always lurked in deep recesses of her mind is sickening.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asks, choking back a sob. It's almost too much darkness and despair to deal with, even for her.

"Because," Ninety-six says, a solitary tear tracking down her starkly pale cheek, "you have something I'll never have again: a reason to live beyond a crazed obsession for revenge. You don't know how good you've got it. You can talk to her any time you want. Hold her hand whenever you get the urge. Hug her as hard as you like when she drops by just because she loves you so much more than you'll ever deserve. But me? I've spent more nights the past year than I care to count staring into the business end of a loaded pistol."

Alex groans. "Christ Almighty." How great must this woman's grief be for her to arrive at the point she's ready to blow her own brains out? She doesn't really want to think about – not to mention acknowledge – the likelihood that she'd get there, too, if her Kara died in her arms.

"Yeah." The broken woman averts her gaze briefly, face a portrait of unfathomable suffering. "Every night I wish I could pull the trigger, but I can't so long as that... _vermin_...is still scurrying about through whatever tunnel he's burrowed himself into. Until Lex is found and dealt with, I can't give myself that release. But one day I will. One day I'll get a knock on my door, and it'll be Kal there to take me to wherever he's holding that shit-stain of a man who robbed us of our sunshine. Oh, will we ever take our sweet, sweet time dissecting him. And when it's over, I'll hop aboard the first train to join Kara in Rao's light."

She then turns on Alex so quickly, there is no time for Alex to express her dismay at hearing what awaits this poor woman at the end of her harrowing, bloody road of revenge. Brown eyes hardening into granite, Alex Ninety-six launches into a diatribe that has Alex's chest and throat constricting so tightly she can hardly force enough air into her lungs to keep her brain functional.

"But you?" the woman says. "You still have _everything_ because you still have Kara. That means you also have a chance at happiness that Maggie, good as she seems right now, can never give you. She'll never know you like Kara does, never accept you the way Kara does, never love you as good as Kara does. She'll never measure up to Kara for any version of us that caught even a glimpse of her extraterrestrial majesty. And that's not fair to Maggie...or to you.

"You it owe to yourself – hell, you owe it to Kara – to, for once in your life, earn the title Astra once gave me. She called me Brave One, but that's such a lie. I'm a coward where it counts. Risking my life on the job was never hard for me. Risking my heart, though? That I couldn't do until it was too late." Eyes going large and imploring, she grabs Alex by the upper arms, fingers digging in so hard Alex is sure they will leave bruises. "So I beg you with everything that is in me...don't be like me! Don't be a coward. I can tell you from experience that I would give anything, _anything_ , to go back and confess how I felt. How I still feel."

The intensity of her alternate's passionate plea strikes a chord in Alex that has her entire frame vibrating. And not only with the excitement of this unveiling of a new aspect to her devotion for Kara, but out of sheer terror of the consequences it may rain down upon her life. And Kara's.

"Even if she rejected you?" she asks, at last giving leeway to the possibility that she's harbored unsisterly affections for Kara this entire time.

Had she, like her alternate, so thoroughly suppressed them that it took a cataclysmic event such as Kara's death – or being confronted by the _possibility_ of it – to wake her up to her own feelings? If so, she was even more emotionally stunted than she'd previously thought, which was a lot. Frankly, she sometimes believed she'd stopped emotionally developing after her father's death. That being true would certainly explain how she could remain blissfully ignorant that she'd fallen in love with her foster sister. The real question is, what is she going to do about suddenly becoming cognizant of them? Did she have the bravery her alternate was imploring her to exercise with which to confront both her own feelings and Kara's?

And that opens up a whole other can of worms. Mainly Kara's reaction to any potential confession from Alex. Would she feel as this other Alex has so boldly claimed she would? That she's been as in love with Alex as Alex has her all the years, only she's never deluded herself into forgetting? Has Kara been carrying a secret torch for her all this time? If she has, why hasn't she said anything? Why did she watch Alex wreck herself with a slew of men who couldn't even get her off? Most importantly, why didn't she fess up when Alex came out? The aftermath of Maggie's initial rejection would have presented a perfect opportunity for Kara to broach the topic. And yet she'd remained silent, offering that selfless support and encouragement Alex has come to depend on for stability in her otherwise chaotic world.

Burning as she is for explanations, Alex simply doesn't know the answer to any of this. Not yet. All she does know is that she has a lot of thinking to do when she gets back home, not only about herself and Kara, but about Maggie, and what she's to do about their engagement in the light of these unearthed feelings. Because she has to do something. If her doppelganger was right about one thing, it's that it isn't fair for her string Maggie along with less than the whole of her. And the sad fact of the matter is, even when she was still in the dark about her inclinations toward Kara, Maggie was never going to get all of her. There are enormous segments of her heart, such vast portions that she ought to have been clued in to the depths of her affections long before now, that have been Kara's for so long no one else can possibly possess them.

"Even then," Ninety-six says, releasing her punishing grip on Alex's arms. "But I can tell you right now that she won't."

Alex hugs herself, feeling exposed and raw and tiny all of the sudden. "How can you be so sure?"

"Like I told you before, Kara admitted at the end that she felt the same way."

"What if she was just telling you what she thought you wanted to hear so you wouldn't be miserable after she was gone?"

Her alternate nods in concession of the point. "That sounds like something she would do. Which is why I had that exact same thought at first. But about a month after she died, I was going through her things and stumbled across her journal from High School. You know the one, right? It has her family crest on the outside. Until that day, I never could figure out why she wouldn't let me read it when she shared literally everything else about her life with me. Does she have that on your Earth?"

Alex does know the one. She was the one that bought it for Kara, and she's sure Ninety-six knows that. "Yes."

"Find it. Read it. Then you'll know she's been hiding her feelings for as long as you have," the other woman says, no, demands. And then goes on to answer some of those troubling questions Alex didn't have the first idea how to go about resolving. "But unlike you, she never let go of them. She just set them aside because she didn't think you'd ever return them, and that they would just further strain your relationship with Mom. I always thought I was the one protecting Kara, but it wasn't until I read the journal that I realized she's been protecting me. Only I wish she hadn't. I wish, more than anything, she'd told me how she felt."

Her alternate wraps her arms around herself as if chilled to the bone, expression distant, wounded, and so incredibly sad. Alex is stricken yet again by how broken this woman is. And little wonder. She'd be broken, too, if she lost her Kara.

"I'd rather have lost Mom forever and been happy with Kara," the emotionally ailing woman says, voice a poignant match to her totally defeated countenance and posture. "'Cause I would have been. Happy. She's all I ever wanted, all I ever cared about, and I can't believe I lost sight of that even for a second. But I did. I took my eye off the ball for the blink of an eye and now she's gone, and all I have left to live for is vengeance." She suddenly turns on Alex, eyes regaining focus and hardening with resolve. "Don't let that be your story. There's still time for you to write a happy ending. I have to believe that. I have to believe that at least one of us will get to be with her the way we were meant to. Otherwise, I don't think I'd have the strength to honor her memory by giving her justice."

What can Alex say to that? What can she possibly offer this woman other than empty platitudes? Even if there was something she could say or do, it wouldn't matter. This is a woman exactly like her, with a one track mind bent toward delivering justice for Kara no matter the cost. Only after she's achieved that, it will then turn to accomplishing her own destruction. And there is nothing Alex can do to stop it. Nor would she if she could. She could tell this Earth's J'onn all about his subordinate's self-destructive mental state and have him put her on lock down for her own safety. But she won't do that. She refuses to betray the woman when she damn well knows she'd want the same respect shown to her if their roles were reversed. She'd want to be left to make her own choice. With Kara gone forever, the choice would be obvious.

So she promises that she'll try. That she'll take a pause to think things through, and try to do better. By herself and by Kara. That she'll resolve things with Maggie somehow, some way, without tearing them both into pieces in the process. And that when she's had sufficient time to sort herself out, she'll approach Kara and earn Astra's title by doing the scariest thing she can think of. And it is _terrifying_ to contemplate letting this cat out of the bag to Kara. Sweet and understanding and compassionate as Kara is, she also has the power to destroy Alex, to utterly annihilate her with only a few cutting words that might sound something like, " _you're sick, Alex! I never want to see you again!_ " Hearing that from Kara...God. That would end her.

But in the back of her mind and within the depths of her heart there is a spark alight that has lived on undimmed since it was ignited by an alien orphan with dirty blonde hair and the most soulful blue eyes that have ever existed. It's hope. Hope that there is a path that leads to her confirming her counterpart's assertion that Kara really does feel the same way, that there's a future for them in which they can be _everything_ for each other without shame or guilt or the fear of what others might think about foster sisters casting off the shackles they been unwillingly bound with to realize the endless potential of their love. And if there is even a small chance that path exists, that it's there and waiting for Alex to take the first step down it so that Kara can join her...well, then doesn't she owe it to herself – and to Kara – to seek it out?

In the heat of the moment, Alex believes she does. Whether that stays true when she gets back home remains to be seen. Faced with a fiancée who still thinks things are okay between them and a sister she's spent so long calling that that the stigma attached to these unveiled feelings is undeniable, who's to say she won't do what she always does? Tuck tail and run. Or sacrifice her love for Kara on the altar of keeping the status quo so that no innocent delusions are shattered besides hers. Either option will result in more heartbreak than Alex can stomach inflicting upon the two most important people in her life. Telling Kara means hurting Maggie. Not telling Kara means she'll have to go on pretending that she can give Maggie what she needs, all of her, which is just not possible for Alex when the lion's share of her will always belong to Kara. All of this means only one thing: she's going to have choose between Maggie and Kara. And the saddest part of that is, it really isn't a choice at all. Just as it was when they were growing up, it is and always will be Kara.

When Alex tells her Earth Ninety-six counterpart that, the woman gives her the first and only genuine smile. She frames it in her memory for reasons she hardly understands at the time. But she will in the not-so-distant future when she returns to this world to see things have played out exactly as her alternate predicted. It's the joy belonging to a woman who's reached the summit of her mountain, who's gotten the ultimate victory and now knows it's okay for her to lay down her sword and armor and, at long last, take her final rest.

And as Alex stands that day at the completed headstone, mixed in the with ache in her chest for the tragedy that befell this version of herself is a secret wish that the look she'd seen will be replicated in her own face when the last of her own battles have been fought.

She can't know it at that time, but many years later she will get her wish.


	3. An Old Love Becomes New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One month after the events in the previous chapters, Kara comes home to find a visitor waiting for her.

Kara shuffles into her apartment with a weary sigh. It's been a long, tiring day consisting of one mind-numbing staff meeting followed by hours of tedious editing. Her first major story is set to break front page in the morning, an exposé of the exploitative, reckless environment nurtured by Lord Technologies new CEO, a woman Maxwell Lord himself had personally appointed as his successor the day he abruptly resigned from all but the board of the company that bore his name. The shock of his departure in the wake of Myriad did not extend to his corporation's continuance of his lackadaisical policies toward ethics and morality in business or the nepotism that guided his choice of replacement. What was a surprise, at least to Kara, is that Max's sister Madeleine was a university acquaintance of one Lena Luthor. The two, apparently, had a highly contentious rivalry, and since the rebranded L Corp began expanding into National City, it had been reignited. Just this time, instead of jockeying for class GPA position there were billions of dollars and countless lives at stake should the showdown over a highly experimental nanotech both corporations were developing get out of hand.

When Winn had speculated that the new tech could have weapons applications to the order of mass destruction, not only to humans but to aliens as well, Kara was compelled to act. Wasting no time, she confronted Lena in person about the project, and was relieved to hear her friend swear that she was operating above board to beat Lord Industries – and longstanding adversary Madeleine as a fringe benefit – to the market with her prototype. Aside from their fast friendship, Lena had been a relatively open book so far as Kara could tell, so she had every reason to trust her assertions.

Miss Lord, on the other hand, went on to prove herself every bit as hostile toward and openly cynical of the media as her brother was of the government. Of the three interviews Kara conducted with the woman over the past month, none were anywhere remotely approaching cordial. Once, the atmosphere grew especially tense when the highly intelligent, disarmingly beautiful woman began to spout her brother's tired spiel about humanity needing protection from alien menaces such as Supergirl. The way Miss Lord stared at Kara as she deliberately pronounced every syllable of that name made the hairs on Kara's neck stand up.

Suspicions seemingly confirmed that Lord Tech was once again up to no good, she dove head first into an exhaustive investigation. Countless hours were spent chasing down sources, researching patents and scouring articles from various tech and science publications. None of her work was done as Supergirl, either. Let no one ever accuse Kara Danvers, journalist extraordinaire, of taking shortcuts on the article that she hopes will put her career on the map. Since she'd limited herself meant every avenue and lead she pursued took that much longer to run down, but Kara has always been as resourceful as she is determined. Within two weeks she got the break she'd been searching for when she located a series of questionable shipments to an abandoned industrial park Lord Tech had scooped up just after Madeleine took the reins. All that was left was connecting the dots via paper trail, which incurred two more weeks of intensive research, quite a bit of admittedly dangerous snooping, and which culminated in several mentally draining writing sessions. But she'd done it! She'd nabbed a scoop juicy enough to make Lois Lane go green with envy.

Today, she'd been nose deep correcting hasty grammar snafus and spiffing up less than stellar vocabulary choices in her draft, which she then presented to Snapper for approval. The cantankerous goat actually looked pleased with her work. So pleased that he let her take it to James herself and present it as a candidate for next day's Front Page. That James agreed with Snapper's assessment had Kara so overjoyed she'd felt as if she were floating on liquid sunshine. For a scarce few minutes, anyway.

Being published front page is a huge accomplishment and an enormous step forward for her reputation as a respectable journalist. That being the case, she ought to have been getting ready to celebrate this major victory with her loved ones instead of wallowing at home all by her lonesome. For the past month there has been something missing in her life that makes the taste of satisfaction she ought to derive from her byline gracing the same spot Cat Grant's once did seem bittersweet.

Coinciding with Kara's investigation into Madeleine Lord, Alex grew strangely disconnected from her personal life, leaving Kara stressed at virtually all hours on a completely different tangent than her work-related load. The temporary estrangement, mysterious as it is, has been bad for her grocery bill if not amazing for her career. She has always worked harder when anxious, and the current worrying bout of distance from Alex has proved an excellent impetus for her to pour her focus into her job. Well, her _paying_ one. Thankfully, there haven't been any major events and only a few minor accidents, such as car wrecks and construction mishaps, which required her to don the cape. Sans those distractions, she's made more professional progress of late than she has at any other equivalent period since taking the promotion from executive assistant to budding journalist.

The only problem with that is she wants to share her success with Alex. That she can't, that she's giving Alex her space because she's a good sister and knows better than push Alex when she's like this, only exacerbates her frustration over the glaring absence of her favorite person in the entire universe. Which is why tonight her only plans are to plop down in front of the TV and eat enough Thai leftovers to feed five adult males while binging on disgustingly sappy dramas. If she can't have Alex, she'll have to settle for crying her eyes out over re-watching the Gilmore Girls series finale.

That plan, unfortunately or fortunately Kara can not yet tell, goes up in smoke the second she glances into the kitchen area of her loft. Her brows scrunch in confusion upon noticing she has company. And not just any company...

"Alex?" Kara's heart initially soars with joy at Alex having broken her self-imposed exile. But then it crashes down with astounding ferocity as Alex's rigid posture registers. Her sister is seated at the dining table, head in her hands with Kara's old high school journal splayed out in front of her. And... _Wait a second._ _M_ _y journal?_ Kara's eyes bulge as panic inundates her system. "No! Don't read that!" She moves with super speed to snatch the notebook away, but Alex has anticipated the move and locked it up tight against her chest where Kara can't get at it without touching places she isn't supposed to want to touch.

Brown eyes normally...well, an open book...are indecipherable as they probe Kara's fearful blue ones. "When were you going to tell me?" Alex asks, tone demanding and laced with hurt that makes Kara feel like a total heel. "Never? Were you just going to let me go on being ignorant of how you really felt?"

"Uh..." Kara scratches nervously at the back of her neck, then shrugs as if she has no idea what Alex is referring to. The only problem is that she does know, and she is clueless as to how to address the topic Alex has so indelicately broached. Kara nibbles at her lip, squinting nervously as she tries to put on an air of ignorance. "I don't know what you're talking about?" When Alex angrily waves the colorful journal in front of her face, Kara gives her a jittery laugh that woefully passes as detached dismissal. "Oh, that? _Pfff_...just ignore the silly stuff I wrote in there. It doesn't mean anything."

Alex's lips spread into a thin line and her eyes harden – the pit bull look that says she's latched on now and won't let go until her jaws are pried free, a virtual impossibility if experience is a reliable guide. Kara understands in that moment there is no getting away from this discussion, and as much as that terrifies her, it's also sort of thrilling. She's been smothering these feelings for so long now that letting them breathe once again proves a temptation almost beyond her ability or will to resist. But she does just that, as the fear that's kept her silent all these years is a far more powerful motivator. Should she prove unable to explain away the contents of the journal, Alex may never forgive her.

"Doesn't mean anything?" Alex parrots Kara's line with harsh exasperation. "C'mon. Don't lie to me. You're terrible at it for one. Secondly, I can read your tells better than anyone. That nervous laugh, the worrying your lip, shuffling your feet, avoiding eye contact? Tell me it doesn't mean anything without any of that contrary body language and maybe I'll believe you."

Kara pauses her nervous fidgeting, allowing herself a second to calm the spike of terror-induced adrenaline flooding her system and muddying her thoughts. On the one hand, she can't put Alex off. Dismissing the journal entries as insignificant won't play now, not when she's already tipped her hand by acting all guilty. With that option eliminated, the only remaining one she can see is a ham-fisted attempt to deflect her _oh-so-very-wrong_ feelings as a youthful phase of folly she's grown out of. Maybe, just maybe, Alex will buy that one. She has to. The alternatives are just too horrifying.

Having decided her course, for better or worse, she squares her shoulders and clears her throat. The secret confessions Alex has undoubtedly read are explosive enough to permanently alter their relationship, maybe even fatally wound it, so Kara wills herself to remain as nonplussed as possible, sending a silent prayer to Rao that her tactic convinces Alex that she's past this even though she isn't, and that they can still be sisters and best friends and nothing will have to change. She forces herself to believe this because losing Alex will be far worse than losing her planet and her parents in the blink of an eye had been.

"Okay," she says, voice a little shaky and uncertain for her liking, "you're right. I did mean all those things. But you have to realize, Alex, when I wrote them...? I was confused at the time. Yeah," she nods as if to convince herself and make the lie more plausible. " _Totally_ confused. What with me being an alien adjusting to Earth plus raging teenage hormones and stuff? Not a good combo." She chuckles nervously as she nudges her glasses further up her nose, then gestures lamely. "You know how it was."

"I do," Alex says, still aggravatingly unreadable. She rises from her seat and slowly approaches Kara, who braces for a rejection that will probably irreparably break her. "I was a mess as well if you'll remember. And I also was confused by feelings I didn't understand. For me, that confusion didn't go away. Not really. Not until someone with unique insight woke me up and forced me to confront what I'd been hiding from for so long."

Kara nods, squeezing her eyes shut at what she takes as a reference to Maggie. It's funny how grateful she is for the spunky, no nonsense woman's meteoric arrival into Alex's orbit considering how she feels for Alex. Had it not been for Maggie, Alex might have lived her entire life in the dark as to why her relationships with men never worked, why they couldn't satisfy her or understand her or make her feel crazy in love. Sort of like Kara was for Alex, only Alex didn't know that until today, and if Kara had anything to say about it Alex would leave her apartment believing that so-called 'phase' had passed.

So even if it felt like her heart was being ripped out one day at a time watching Alex love someone else, she would always be in Maggie's debt. If nothing else, Maggie made Alex happy. Happier than Kara ever could anyway, which makes her sad on a whole other level that she isn't interested in exploring at the moment lest she dissolve into bitter tears.

But then Alex cups her cheek, thumb stroking the skin just beneath her eyelids. Kara cracks her eyes open to see the woman who represents her every hope and dream wearing this brilliant little smile as if her heart is a fountain overflowing, only not for Maggie but for _Kara_ , and that has treacherous hope springing up in Kara's heart.

"I know what you're thinking," Alex goes on, stepping close enough that there is barely any space between them.

"You do?" Kara asks in muted, uncertain tones, leaning into Alex's hand, reveling in the warmth of her skin and the tenderness of her touch.

Alex tilts her head just so, discerning eyes holding Kara's fast. "You're thinking I was referring to Maggie." She shakes her head and lets out a breathy sigh. "I can see why you'd think that. But I wasn't. I was talking about someone else. While you were away, I met someone..."

Kara's brows leap into her hairline as she springs away. "You did?!"

"Not that way," Alex corrects Kara's knee-jerk assumption. "I was trying to get to Earth Prime, and I may have fiddled with Cisco's gizmo..."

Kara gasps, the implications sinking in immediately. " _Alex_! Not cool! Do you know how dangerous that was?"

"Believe me, I do now," Alex says, wearing a wry grin. "Thankfully the other J'onn sent me back home with a similar device. But before that, I had a rather unfortunate introduction to my doppelganger."

"Oh, wow. That must have been super awkward. I never met mine before. On Prime. I – I think she's either still in hiding or..." Kara trails off, swallowing thickly. "Dead."

Alex sucks in a harsh breath at the idea, like she's just been sucker punched. "Yeah," she grimaces, complexion paling as if she's about to be sick. "You were on the Earth I visited. Dead, I mean. Well, she was. Earth Ninety-six Kara. For about a year by the time I arrived. The other me...she, uh, didn't take it very well. She was pretty much a hateful, depressed, functional alcoholic with rage issues and a nasty penchant for shooting people with stun guns. Explains why I got such a rude reception. Anyway, after I came to, we argued a bit, she shot me again and then had her J'onn lug me to National City Cemetery. I found her waiting for me at the first of her Kara's gravestones."

Grim as the conversation has turned, Kara picks up something that piques her interest. "Wait. Gravestones? As in multiple?"

Alex scratches at the back of her neck, shuffling her feet around uncomfortably. "Yeah, um, the city put up a special marker for Supergirl. It was really impressive, actually. Incredibly life-like. And she also had a personal one put up one for her Kara Danvers. I was taken to both."

"Oh." Kara stares at Alex, thinking of a world she'd been so beloved by the citizens of National City that they'd erected a monument to her upon her death. It's sort of affirming in a macabre sort of way that she isn't entirely comfortable with. "I guess that was nice of the city government. Right?"

Alex's frown is so deep her brows nearly touch. "I'd have preferred there was nothing there to see at all because you – I mean _she_ – was still alive. So would the other me, for that matter. Which is the entire reason she took me there. To show me what I've been taking for granted, what I've been neglecting way too much of late." She pauses, grave countenance painted over with guilt. "Kara, I'm so sorry..."

Already knowing where this is going, Kara interrupts by grasping for Alex's elbows. She holding them with measured pressure intended to convey how serious she was without inflicting bodily injury.

"Hey, no," she says. "No need to apologize. You don't have anything to be sorry about." The look Alex returns to her is nothing short of desperate, and it nearly knocks Kara right onto her butt.

"But I do!" Alex says. "I haven't been here for you like I should have. I've been absent, and not just this past month. Way before that. I..." she runs an unsteady hand through her hair, biting her lip so hard her teeth leave an indention behind when she releases it. "I got so caught up with Maggie that I couldn't see anything else, didn't have room for anything else. I mean, for Christ's sake, I almost missed your birthday."

"But you didn't," Kara says, hurting for Alex's turmoil over this. She'd thought they were past all of this stuff. "You came through just like always. And it's okay that you're in a happy bubble with Maggie. That's what happens when you fall in love." She ducks her head at the last bit, hating the way that had sounded like she meant it every bit as much as she's relieved by the same.

"I didn't, though," Alex says, tipping Kara's chin up. When Kara looks a bit confused, she elaborates, "Turns out I wasn't as in love with her as I thought."

Kara lets go of Alex's elbows to step back, wrapping her arms around her own waist as she withdraws. "I don't understand. What are you saying?"

Letting her arms flop useless at her sides, Alex heaves an exasperated sigh. Kara can tell her frustration is pointed internally, like it almost always is with Alex.

"This past month, I've been doing a lot of thinking," Alex says. "The other me...well, she gave me a lot to consider, and I promised her I'd take time off...from _everything_...to do some soul searching. So that's what I did. I put some distance between me and everyone else, including Maggie. To do personal inventory, you know? To carefully examine my feelings and actions over the past six months. Hell, since you came to live with us in Midvale, even. Somewhere along the way as I contemplated everything the other me said, it dawned on me that she was right. About a lot of stuff." She pauses, sighs as she turns her gaze upward as if searching for the right words to explain all she's been through these four and a half weeks.

"Like what?" Kara prompts.

Alex's countenance is as troubled as Kara has seen it when she lowers her gaze. "Maggie for one," she says, lips spread into a thin line. "In retrospect, I can see now that I kinda jumped into things with her. Looked before I leapt, as it were, like I always criticize you for doing. And that made me feel like such a hypocrite."

Kara starts to argue on principle, but Alex shakes her head in the negative. "No, let me finish," she says. "I need to say this, and you need to hear it." Kara nods, almost reluctant because she's a little afraid to hear more. She stays silent, though, out of respect for Alex. "I was so convinced I was in love with her," Alex goes on. "Head over heels, I thought. I mean, I wouldn't have proposed otherwise, right? But after coming back from the other Earth with a whole new perspective, I can see now that I was deluding myself. What I'd believed so passionately to be love was, I think, more like lust getting all mixed up with being awestruck by Maggie's super sexy confidence and intoxicated by the high of a new relationship – my first since I came out at that. And the more I ruminated on the things I learned on Earth Ninety-six, the more I also realized I was actually incapable of being in love with Maggie. Or with anyone else, really..."

"That's not true, Alex!" Offended on Alex's behalf that she'd think such a thing, Kara steps back into Alex's personal space, grasping her upper arms this time. "You have such a big heart. The biggest I know of." She lets go of one of Alex's arms to press her index finger on the left side of Alex's chest, right over the heart that is steadily thumping that unique rhythmic pattern Kara could recognize from anywhere. "And there is so much love in here, more love that you or me or anyone else can imagine. And I don't want to hear otherwise!"

Smiling strangely at Kara's outburst, Alex bops Kara on the nose. "I didn't mean it that way, goof. If you'd let me finish, I was about to say that I couldn't love Maggie or anyone else because I was already in love before I met her. A long time before, actually."

Confused again, Kara tilts her head, scrunching her brows together. "Are you...are you talking about Vicky?"

"No, you silly alien," Alex says, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "Someone else had taken possession of my heart before Vicky even registered on my fledgling gaydar."

"Oh." Mouth hanging open a like a bass, Kara wracks her brain to figure out who Alex might be talking about. No one immediately comes to mind, and she's so curious now that she needs to know. "Who might that be?"

"Oh, Kar, do you really not know?" Alex asks, her expression shifting in a direction Kara is well familiar with, one of utter adoration and devotion for her. Only there's a new note to it, a new sparkle to her eyes as she roves them over Kara's face, and it's so intense and profound that it makes the flesh on Kara's forearms and the back of her neck pebble over. Slinking closer, Alex winds her arms low around Kara's waist.

"Wha-what are you d-doing?" Kara asks, heart beginning to race. Alex has never touched her this way before. And it's not that she objects or that it feels bad or scary or unwanted. Quite the opposite. It's just, it's so sudden, and Alex is supposed to be with Maggie, and is supposed to be angry at her about the journal, and it's all so _confusing_.

"Answering your question," Alex says, resolute and tender all at the same time. She's so close now that her breath is warm against Kara's lips, and Kara can smell the lingering sweetness of Alex's favorite gum. And then they're flush together, and Kara's entire frame shudders, her eyes rolling shut of their own accord. Her heart is beating so frenetically now it's a wonder it hasn't burst through her sternum. "There's only ever been one person who has owned my heart, Kara Zor-El. That day your cousin brought you to our house was the beginning of the end for me. Try as I might to fight it, I couldn't stop myself from loving you. Only..."

Kara exhales, peeling her eyes open to find Alex dipping in until their foreheads are resting together. "Only what?" she probes, now caught up in the spell that is being woven between them.

Whatever is going on with Alex, whatever this is, however wrong she's told herself it would be for them to be together this way, she can't bear to break away now. Not when everything she's ever dreamed of is so close. Not when Alex is holding her so reverently, and the love in her eyes has taken on an inflection Kara never thought she'd see. It's so beautiful that it stuns her and arrests her artist's eyes so that she can already see herself painting Alex just like this, more emotionally confident than she's ever been, settled within herself, at peace, and so, so in love. With _her_. And that is overwhelming to a degree that Kara has to quell the urge to pinch herself just to ensure she's actually awake and not in some kind of alien-induced comatic delusion like the Black Mercy.

Oh, how she used to dream of this when she was younger! Being in Alex's arms, having her love reciprocated, planning a whole future together, and knowing that tomorrow she'd get to do it all over again. As she aged, the fantasies ebbed more due to defeatism than anything else. And then Jeremiah died, and Alex withdrew into a protective shell that kept everyone at arm's length. Kara gave up all hope after that of ever getting Alex to stop looking at her like the hapless little sister everyone thought she was and see her as an equal and a potential partner.

On Krypton, same sex couples were as ordinary as, to borrow an American saying, apple pie. Kara had arrived on earth already aware she was bisexual. But Alex had suppressed her desires so hard that she'd convinced herself, and everyone else around her including Kara, that she was razor straight. That didn't stop Kara from falling; it didn't prevent her first wet dream from being about Alex; and it didn't stop her from imagining how _perfect_ they would be together, how amazing their life would be if that last barrier preventing them from being _everything_ to each other was forever destroyed.

As hokey as it may sound, the tearing down of that particularly annoying wall had looked an awful lot like this in Kara's mind. Just reversed. Where instead of Alex being the one doing the confessing, it was her.

"I had blinded myself to just how far I fell," Alex then says, answering the question Kara had posed as she gently nuzzles their noses together. "And despite my best efforts to quench it, that love has remained a smoldering ember just beneath the surface, waiting for me to give it a solitary puff of oxygen to reignite the blaze. If your journal is any indication, I think it's the same for you."

Eyes large and begging for clarity, Kara brings her hands up to gingerly support Alex's jaw. "What, exactly, are you saying? I...I need for you to be very, very clear right now."

Gazing back at her reverently, Alex reaches up to brush some of Kara's hair behind her ear. "I'm saying that I broke up with Maggie over a month ago because I couldn't keep lying to her or to myself."

Kara's heart drops. "Alex! Oh, no!" So shocked by this announcement, she tries to pull away, blanching with horror that she'd become so intoxicated by this development with Alex she hadn't even thought about the ramifications for Maggie. Sweet, strong, sassy Maggie who didn't deserve to get hurt just because she'd made the mistake of loving a woman Kara is too selfish to let go of. Guilt swarms her, threatening to wipe out the hope that has been building up to a frightful and yet exhilarating crescendo.

But Alex stops Kara's movement, holding her still. And when she starts to say something, to express her dismay and her shame, Alex brings her hands to Kara's hips and grips them so tightly that Kara can actually feel the pressure.

"Don't you dare blame yourself," Alex says. "It's not your fault. And believe it or not, it'll be okay. Did it hurt her? Yes. It did me, too, but it was the right thing to do. I could never love her the way I should, the way she deserves. There's only one person I can ever love that way."

"T-there is?" Kara asks, playing the ingenue for effect, or at least that's what she'll tell people later to downplay how petrified she is. "Anyone I know?"

Effervescent smile splitting her cheeks, Alex tenderly cups Kara's cheeks between her hands. "You tell me. Who do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I see...me?" Wrinkling her nose, Kara feigns being the stereotypical, obtuse airhead. Less defensive mechanism as it is a loosening of the knot in her chest that kept trying to convince her this was all a cruel setup. But it isn't. It's real, and as that begins to sink in, Kara grows increasingly giddy.

"Astute as ever!" Alex chuckles. "That's her." Returning her hand to Kara's waist Alex tugs her closer so that they're flush once more. "That's the selfless, kind, gorgeous, funny, and amazing woman who makes my life worth living." Eyes swimming with unadulterated affection, she ducks in at an angle until their lips are a hairsbreadth from making contact. "That's the person I never, ever, ever want to live without. The girl I'm hopelessly in love with and always will be."

"Alex..." Kara breathes the name as if a prayer. She wants to close the distance so badly that her lips are already aching for Alex's kiss. But she needs to be certain this isn't some misguided attempt to make her feel better about the journal or a move of desperation because Alex had been to a world where Kara was dead and she was reacting to the trauma of that discovery. "Are you sure?" she asks, voice unsteady out of a fear that Alex will back out, having seen sense. She pulls away enough to hold Alex's eyes. "I don't want you to feel like you have return my feelings just because of what you saw on that other Earth or read in my journal..."

But Alex just smiles that smile that makes her cheeks pop and really emphasizes the adorable flare of her nose. "Did you just indirectly admit to still having feelings for me of the romantic variety? You know, just to be _very, very_ _clear_..."

" _Uhh_... _uhmm_ …oh, shoot!" Kara's face screws up with chagrin. "I guess you got me there."

"I guess I did," Alex says, looking insufferably pleased with herself. "So? Was that a yes?" Kara nods, swallowing nervously as she licks her lips, then nibbles at them. Alex watches with suddenly hooded eyes and rapidly dilating pupils. "Good. Glad to hear it."

Kara sucks in a breath against mounting desire. "You are, huh?"

Nodding, Alex ducks in again. " _Mmhmm_. That means it's okay for me to do this." And this time, she doesn't stop until their mouths seal together.

The sensation of Alex's velvet smooth lips against Kara's is nothing short of divine. Angels burst into exultant hymns within her bliss overloaded brain, joining a symphony of cosmic strings and horns reciting a melody as eternal as it is ethereal and beautiful. It's the music of love, driven by soaring notes and thrilling harmonies, and conducted by two souls who despite being birthed into worlds disparate not only in terms of the vastness of space but culturally, scientifically, socially, and emotionally were yet woven together from the dawn of existence.

An intangible, imperative affinity that defies definition, categorization, and explanation has knit them inextricably together, so that Kara realizes in that moment, with an assurance that has no logical root or rational counter, that she was always going to crash land into Alex's life. Through the lens of one kiss, it has become irrefutably evident that Alex was always intended to be at the center of her universe, that from before they were even conceived, Alex was to meant serve as her constant sun shining through cloud and rain and darkness to bring her to life on a daily basis.

Likewise, Kara is convinced that she was born to love Alex Danvers, and not just as family or as the best of friends or as lovers but in the most comprehensive way two people can love each other, down to the atomic level; more than even being Supergirl, it is her calling in life, her mission, and her greatest privilege. The proof comes with each breath, as Alex's scent lingers in her nostrils, then settle down into her lungs like it belongs there, giving her new energy that her every cell in her body thrumming with vitality; and it is made obvious by the way their bodies fit together, like a two piece puzzle, each segment of which is cut into unique shapes only matched by the other.

Tingling that begins in the tips of her toes begins to lazily migrate through her foot, up into her calf where it picks up speed before jolting through her thighs to converge in her womanhood with the warmth in her belly the delicious contact sparked into being. Her overly sensitive ears, which have tuned in wholly upon Alex, pick up the resounding thud of a heart racing faster by the second, an unmistakable indication that the kiss is having as intense an effect upon Alex as it is her. Although, she would have known that by smell alone. Alex's arousal is all-too-evident now, having superseded the fragrant note of her perfume in both sweetness and delectability, and the scent of it nearly sends Kara into a frenzy of lust.

Desperate for more, more, more of this indescribable feeling, more of _Alex_ , she threads the fingers of one hand into the hair at the back of Alex's head then tilts her head to deepen the kiss. The noise Alex makes in response as their tongues tangle is part keening moan and part guttural groan, and it's so sinful, so _unbelievably hot_ , that it shoots straight into Kara's suddenly wet, throbbing core. All she wants is to be closer to Alex, to meld their bodies until they become the living embodiment of the Biblical account of the first marriage, two people who have become one flesh via a union so majestic and mystical as to transcend this mortal coil having dared to touch the pure, celestial planes of holiness. She's drunk of Alex, inundated by her essence, spellbound by the magic of her that no one else can replicate and to which Kara has been hypersensitive from the first time she'd looked into those impossibly intelligent, soulful brown eyes and seen the infinite intricacies and boundless mysteries of the universe being laid bare before her.

This is it. This is everything. This is true love, it's soul mates, it's belonging on a level that only two people who share those rarified bonds can understand. And if kissing Alex can do this, can elicit this type of response, Kara is a little afraid and a _lot_ excited to find out what it will be like when they finally make love. Which, judging by the way Alex's hips are rolling against Kara's thigh, won't be long. But Kara isn't sure Alex is ready for that. Not so soon after breaking up with Maggie.

She tears away from Alex's lips, chest heaving. "We have to stop..."

"We do? Why?" Alex asks, looking a bit ruffled and totally gorgeous. Her lips are kiss-plumped, cheeks rosy red, and her hair is a mess from Kara's enthusiastic attention.

"I..." Kara sighs. "I don't want to push you. You just broke up with Maggie, and I don't wanna take advanta..."

"Stop right there," Alex interrupts, index finger finding its way over Kara's lips. Kara blinks, watching Alex intently as she smiles. "I'm the one doing the pushing, remember?" To emphasize the point, she cups Kara's bottom and squeezes it, causing Kara to do an embarrassing little yelp-slash-moan that has her flushing red all over again.

"Are you sure?" Kara asks, needing to hear it expressly before they go any further. Her darn sense of honor will mean she'll feel guilty after if she doesn't get it.

Alex cants her head, dipping closer, intent clear in her eyes, which are twinkling with challenge, "Are you?"

Kara nods, eyes flooding with moisture she is so overwhelmed with joy and an eager anticipation born of waiting so very long for this. "Yes," she says, barely a whisper against Alex's parted lips. "I've never been more sure of anything." And it's true.

Kara loves Alex. Is in love with Alex. Loves her more than anything, in every way it is possible for a person to love another person. Loves her so much that if she were to be offered the opportunity regain Krypton and her family with it at the expense of losing Alex, she'd turn it down without a second thought. Alex is her world, her inspiration, the foundation upon which the house of her heart and soul have been built. There is nothing left for her to live for deprived of Alex. That sort of codependency isn't healthy by any stretch of the imagination, but it's the price to be paid for a love like this, bright enough to eclipse the sun, strong enough to weather any storm, and deep enough to surpass the most vast wells of affection.

But doesn't light go hand-in-hand with darkness, and doesn't strength lack meaning without weakness? The capability to give life comes also with the power to end it. It's a scary thought, scary enough that a younger Kara would have run away screaming in terror faced with sealing her fate in such final terms, which is what will surely happen when she and Alex take this next step. Having experienced loving Alex this way...there will be no coming back for her. Losing her parents had crippled her emotionally for a long time. She's only just started to come out of her shell, and has at long last permitted her delicate petals to blossom under the nourishment of her friends and family. Losing Alex, though, would present a catastrophe beyond imagination, from which she might never fully recover. And if she did recover, she would be a withered ghost of her former glory.

"Before this goes further, I need to know you feel the same as I do," she says, frightened by the idea of Alex changing her mind some time down the road and leaving Kara in a billion mote-like fragments, lost, alone, and forlorn of hope. "I need to know you won't change your mind, that you won't up and decide one day the experiment is over, that you've had your fun and are done with me."

Alex reels back as if Kara had slapped her open palmed on the face. "You think I'd do that to you?" she asks, chin trembling and eyes watering. She looks utterly devastated. Acid churns in Kara's gut. "Do you really think I'm that horrible? That I'm a heartless monster just toying with you for my own amusement?"

"No, Alex! Never! I just..." Kara tries to rewind, to retract her foolish bout of insecurity. But Alex cuts her off.

"That's what it sounded like to me," Alex says, hurt radiating out of her. That skittish expression Alex used to wear all the time after Jeremiah died makes a vengeful return, and Kara's heart drops into her shoes at the sight of it. "You know what? If you really think that, maybe this was a mistake. I should go."

Alex tries to withdraw, which snaps Kara back to her senses. Panicking that Alex is serious about fleeing, she redoubles her hold, keeping Alex wedged against her body. She refuses to relent when Alex tries to fight her way out of an iron grasp.

"Let go, Kara," Alex orders, in full imperious, unflappable Agent mode now.

But Kara digs in her heels both physically and metaphorically. "Not until you hear me out."

"Kara..."

The warning cannot be misinterpreted, but Kara is far too desperate to give it any heed. "No, Alex! Please. _Please_! Just listen. Just for a sec. I swear, I didn't mean it that way. I don't think of you that way. Please, let me explain."

Normally, her pleas wear Alex down the first try. This is not a normal occasion, though. With both of their emotions heightened from the revelation of their feelings for one another, they'd both been rendered vulnerable. Kara's own insecurity had been a barb thrust through Alex's lowered defenses, finding purchase in her suddenly sensitive heart. That said, knowing she's at fault does not deter Kara. She needs Alex to stay, to allow her to resolve this mini-crisis before it becomes something far worse that could legitimately threaten the amazing progress they've made tonight.

So she fights dirty. Jutting out her bottom lip, making puppy dog eyes, tilting her head, she goes all in. And when she sees Alex's resistance melting, feels her rigid posture relax, she knows she's won. Internally, she does a little happy dance.

" _Ugh!_ Fine," Alex says, dropping her head to rest against Kara's shoulder. "You win. Like always. Little cheater. You know I can't say no to your pout."

Relief washes through Kara, expunging much of the terror and panic she'd felt building up at Alex's potential departure. She exhales deeply, one hand gently rubbing nonsensical patterns low on Alex's back while the other rests against her hip.

"I'm know, and I really am so sorry about what I said," she says, and Alex nods then wraps her arms high around Kara's shoulders. Swaying them languidly in place, Kara takes that as permission for her to go on. "I'm just scared. I love you more than anything, Alex. More than my own life. Which means you have the power to destroy me, and that's not something I can afford to take lightly." Alex pulls back, looking confused and little wounded by the accusation, so Kara smiles and ducks in for a little kiss. "Don't worry, that's not a bad thing. Because despite my ineloquent moment, I _do_ trust you. With my heart, with my body, and with my life. I always have with two of those, adding the other shouldn't be that hard. But it is. Crossing this line...you have to realize, there will be no going back for me. I don't think, after having you that way, I'd be able to recover were I to ever lose you."

"Kara, wow..." Alex trails off, in awe, staring into her eyes as if seeing her in a new way. Which Kara supposes she is. She's never told Alex before just how much she means to her. She then does something totally unexpected. She chuckles. "I had no idea. All this time I thought I was alone feeling like my life would be over if I lost you."

"You weren't. Not by a long shot."

"Well, I know that _now,_ " Alex says with a slightly teasing lilt.

The corner of Kara's eyes crinkle with humor. "Better late than never?"

"Yeah, something like that," Alex says, matching Kara's grin. They share a moment of levity that deconstructs all of the tension that had built up. Including that of the sexual variety, much to Kara's disappointment. "Having said that, I think you were right stopping this going any further tonight," Alex adds when the air has turned more serious. "We should cool our jets, take a breath, and get used to being together in the context of this new dynamic before we go there. 'Cause, like you, I think it'll pretty much be the end of me for anyone else."

Kara would be lying to claim she wasn't tempted to disagree. She aches to be with Alex, to taste every last inch of her in worship of a flawless body she's fantasized about way too many times for her be the innocent fawn most people believe her to be. Alex is right. They need to tread carefully, if only because this is already the most important relationship in both of their lives. Adding another layer on top of it, and one that comes with all sort of implications too complicated to process in a day let alone a week or even a month, in the same night as their first kiss is the height of folly. Ready as Kara is to go there physically with Alex, she's not mentally or emotionally, and neither is Alex.

But when they do make love exactly six weeks, two days, one hour, and thirty-one minutes later...? _Rao!_ All Kara can say is that it is the most magical time of her life – until her wedding, that is. She's pretty sure the neighbors don't share that opinion, though, what with the noise complaints she gets the next morning from the folks living beneath her loft. Oops!

"So. Totally. Worth it," she mutters to herself as she closes the door behind the otherwise nice couple who'd visited to calmly suggest she invest in soundproofing her place if Alex was going to stay over more often. Which she is if Kara has any say. Lost in thoughts of the night before, she presses her back into the door and hums in contentment. Only to be startled out of her brief reverie by the pronounced clearing of a throat.

"Hey, there, tiger. Wanna give them something else to complain about?" Alex asks, adopting the bedroom voice she'd used last night – the one that drove Kara wild.

Kara swirls around to see her girlfriend – her girlfriend! Just being able to say that fills her with so much glee that it takes every ounce of self-control to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground – leaning her shoulder against the door frame of their bedroom. Wearing nothing but Kara's salmon-colored button up, womanly hips jutting out, toned creamy legs on full display, auburn locks ravishingly mussed, eyes twinkling with equal measures of amusement and arousal, Alex is a vision of rumpled splendor the like of which even Di Vinci's steady, precise hand could not do justice in capturing for posterity.

 _How is this my life?_ Kara wonders. _How did I get so fracking lucky? Thank you, Rao! I always knew you were listening._

As she stands there, awestruck and gaping like a trout on land, Alex then begins to tortuously unbutton the garment only thinly covering her nudity. Each button undone reveals another tantalizing glimpse of the rounded swell of magnificent breasts that feel even more incredible than they look and another swath of pale flesh Kara longs to lick, suck, and kiss over and over again. The shirt is loosely held together by the last two buttons when Kara snaps out of the enigmatic enchantment woven by her lover's transcendental beauty and irresistible sex appeal. She pounces without warning. Using her super speed, in a flash they're both naked and tangled up in the sheets of her bed, fighting for dominance in a war of pleasure she hopes never ends. It does, sadly, but not until another hour and a half of pure, uninterrupted euphoria have gone by.

The next time those same neighbors knock on her door, they aren't nearly as polite. Alex's audible if not utterly adorable giggling from just out of line of sight of the hallway doesn't help matters either. As it is, Kara has a hard time keeping a straight face while the middle aged couple berates her for being so purposefully rude, and only barely manages to get them to forestall lodging complaint by promising to keep any future amorous activities contained to Alex's apartment, which they do. For the most part.

"Good thing the super loves me and my double chocolate chip brownies," Kara says to an unsurprisingly giggly Alex after smoothing things over a seventh time in two months.

Thankfully, by the time Alex sells her pricey apartment to move in with Kara five months later, the soundproofing has already been installed, thoroughly tested, and proven to be entirely adequate. Not that Kara doesn't give defeating it her most strenuous efforts. After all, if she's learned anything from Alex's unplanned excursion to Earth Ninety-six, it's that there isn't a single minute to spare or a moment to waste with her favorite person in the universe. Neither of them know when their luck will run out, what with their dangerous occupations paired with their equivalent penchant for taking risks.

So she gives Alex her all, in every avenue of their relationship, and does so with full willingness out of a heart overflowing with devotion for her one and only star. That Alex returns Kara's love with every ounce of herself is the icing on the cake. And, _oh!_ , what a cake it is. Better even than the orgasmic confection J'onn makes them for their wedding. Who knew centuries old Martians could develop an abiding passion for baking?

In the end, Kara and Alex are as they always had been, everything to each other. The same as the other Alex was to her Kara. And as they hold hands before the side-by-side tombstones where this perpetually amazing, fulfilling, and interesting chapter of their lives began, Kara looks to the heavens, which are spitting down snow in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season. Eyes closed, she utters yet another prayer to Rao that their deceased alternates have been reunited in His Eternal Light, that they are at peace, happy and in love and safe in the knowledge that no one can ever separate them again.

After adding an equally fervent prayer for herself and _her_ Alex, she opens her eyes to see liquid browns irises gazing at her with unveiled adoration. With the cool, reassuring solidity of Alex's wedding ring against her palm anchoring her, she smiles, then begins what will become an annual recounting of how one couple's tragedy became their ultimate triumph.

Alex, tears now rolling down her cheeks that are a balance of sorrow and the effervescent happiness she's been endowed with since that fateful night some three years ago, caps off Kara's heartfelt speech.

"Sometimes," she says, swiping a tear from her face and then from Kara's, too, "the best lessons are the ones you learn from yourself."

Kara couldn't agree more.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus ends another ficlet. Hopefully it was enjoyable read, and maybe just a little bit thought provoking. Also, the happy ending was my seasonal gift to everyone. To all those who read, left kudos, and especially those who took precious time out of their day to comment, you all have my heartfelt appreciation. Thank you! 
> 
> Merry Christmas, y'all! Stay safe out there! Eat some good food, spend time with loved ones, look back on the past year and reflect on all the blessings. I know I got far more than I deserved. Let's all endeavor to be a bit better in the coming year, yeah? Best wishes from me!


End file.
